Huntingdon buys Harlan to form 3rd largest preclinical CRO

Huntingdon Life Sciences has acquired contract research and animal models firm Harlan Laboratories, making it the third largest preclinical research organisation, according to the company.

The merger - of which financial details have not been revealed - will create a contract research and animal models company with annual revenue of around $500m (€360m), according to Huntingdon’s Managing Director Andrew Gay.

Gay told Outsourcing-Pharma.com Huntingdon’s preclinical services would be boosted with those of Harlan’s, with “not a great deal of overlap” between capabilities and customers of the two firms. Furthermore, he continued, the deal would bring Harlan’s complementary Research Model & Services (RMS) business to the new entity on top of increased contract research services.

“This puts us third in size in serving the pharma industry amongst the preclinical players,” he told us, with public firms Charles River Laboratories (CRL) and Covance leading the way. “For animal breeding we are now only second to CRL.”

“Preclinical service firms are generally smaller organisations [than later phase CROs],” Gay said, but the Huntingdon-Harlan consolidation is not unprecedented. “French firm CytoxLABs
, for example, have bought businesses and grown through consolidation in the past.”

The deal will see Huntingdon’s five mostly European locations complemented by 33 global Harlan sites with a total of approximately 3,500 staff working for the new entity. An assessment of the two firms will take place over the next few months and an integration plan made.